


You're My One Constant

by LeapAngstily



Category: Men's Football RPF
Genre: Bromance to Romance, Fluff, Football Xmas Swap 2018, Friends to Lovers, Look at me stepping out of my comfort zone, M/M, cavity-inducing fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 09:38:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17139404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeapAngstily/pseuds/LeapAngstily
Summary: If someone were to ask, Dele would never admit to keeping a diary.





	You're My One Constant

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ItsADrizzit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ItsADrizzit/gifts).



> a.k.a the Xmas Swap fic that caused me far too many grey hairs and made me realize just how bad I am at stepping out of my comfort zone.
> 
> Anyways, Happy Holidays, [ItsADrizzit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ItsADrizzit)! I'm really sorry if my package didn't reach you by Christmas, but I hope this little thing will compensate at least some of it. I really wanted to give you a longer, more in-depth story, but it turns out I'm no good when it comes to writing ships I'm not familiar with. I did my best, and I did find myself shipping these two just a little bit while writing this, so I guess that's a plus?
> 
> I hope everyone else is having a blast during their holidays too; and if you're working during Christmas, I hope you'll have a chance to take a break once it's over!

If someone were to ask, Dele would never admit to keeping a diary.

It’s not even a real diary, he might argue if someone ever caught him in the act, only a generic notebook that he happens to use to write down his thoughts. On things. Nothing personal about it, nothing secret. He could easily let anyone read it without revealing anything about himself.

It’s a force of habit at this point: he picks up the notebook every evening before he goes to bed and writes down a thing that made him happy that day. It might be something that he ate – _‘Grabbed some Nando’s with the lads after training’_ – something that he did – _‘Beat Harry at Mario Cart’_ – or something as simple as _‘it’s snowing!’_

He’s been doing it since he was 13 – the time period in general is a bit of a blur for him, leaving his mother and moving in with the Hickfords, feeling like shit most of the time, while trying to appear well-adjusted and happy in fear of his new family growing sick of him and his moping.

He remembers Sally Hickford handing him his first notebook and telling him there’s always something worth remembering. He has taken those words to heart.

Sometimes, when he’s feeling down – after a bad loss or a serious injury, or when he’s not scoring like he used to, and all papers are writing him off as a failure – he reads back the old entries, leafing through the light brown pages of recycled paper and _remembers_.

Sometimes, he might even come to realize that ever since his move to Spurs, there’s been one constant in his daily entries.

 

 

_‘My new roommate’s such a tosser. He’s kinda amazing.’_

 

It would be a long shot to say Dele knew Eric before his transfer to Spurs. He knows of him, sure, has seen him around, but he never had a reason to look twice.

That doesn’t stop Eric from welcoming him with open arms into their new shared room in the Spurs training facilities.

“That’s your bed.” Eric points out needlessly, because it’s the only bed not covered by dirty clothes or surrounded by newspaper clippings, posters, and family photos. “If you snore, I’ll kick you out. If you try to claim I snore, I’ll kick you out. Don’t touch my porn, and if you play videogames in the room, I demand an invite.”

He’s beaming at Dele as he spreads his arms and exclaims, “Home sweet home, aye?”

That very first day, Dele finds out Eric hugs like a Portuguese man – easy and casual, just a tad bit too familiar for Dele’s very English sensibilities.

It’s only much later that he makes the connection between Eric’s time abroad and his hugs, though – until then, he only thinks of it as an _Eric_ thing, rather than a Portuguese thing.

Privately, he keeps thinking of it as an Eric thing even after the big revelation, because there’s a side of him that refuses to acknowledge there might be someone else out there whose hugs could make him feel quite as warm.

 

 

_‘63rd minute, Dier and me.’_

 

Dele has played for the national team before, a few minutes here and there, but it doesn’t feel real before he gets to do it with Eric.

It feels _right_ , to get subbed in alongside Eric, to share the pitch just like they do with their club – they know each other, are aware of each other in a way they’ve never experienced with any other player. Dele doesn’t need to look at Eric to know what he’s doing, but he looks anyways, cannot help himself.

He glances over his shoulder at Eric and sees the excitement and happiness on his stupid potato face, and it makes an unfamiliar warmth to spread across Dele’s chest. Eric beams at him and Dele beams right back at him

The warm feeling stays, even as they go on to lose the friendly. Eric hugs him after the match and tells him it’s bloody brilliant.

Dele calls Eric a git and reminds him they lost, but deep down he cannot help but agree with the sentiment — they’ve made it this far, and they’re here together, and they will never give up that feeling of rightness willingly.

 

 

_‘Eric’s rubbish at knitting.’_

 

Dele stares at the pile of wool he just uncovered from the sparkly Christmas present someone (Eric, he’s almost 100 percent sure) left on his bed. It’s dark blue – Spurs blue – with white details. When Dele carefully straightens out the folds, the recognizes the work as some sort of tube scarf.

Dele’s never knitted anything – his mom never taught him, and by the time he moved in with his foster family, he was too much of a rebellious teenager to bother – but even he can tell the scarf is handmade, and probably by someone not too familiar with the craft themselves.

There’s no clear pattern, only crooked rows of stitches alternating between too tight and too loose lines. There’s a loose end of yarn hanging from where the ends of the garment have been sewn together. It’s absolute rubbish, but it’s also thick and warm, and Dele can’t help but love it.

There’s a small card that falls from between the folds when Dele moves to pull the scarf around his neck.

_My sister taught me how to do it. I promise next year I’ll do better. – Eric_

The material is almost too soft to be real, the touch on Dele’s skin like a caress.

He makes a mental note to get something great for Eric in return, because there’s still two days before Christmas, and he feels bad for not getting anything for him sooner, when obviously Eric has been working on his present for weeks in advance.

He wears the scarf for practice that day. The lads make a huge deal of calling him out on his sappiness – they don’t even know who the gift is from, and they don’t care – but Dele catches Eric’s shy smile and flushed cheeks across the pitch.

Neither of them mentions the gift again, even though Dele keeps wearing the scarf all through the winter – and the next one, too.

 

 

_‘Eric’s got a funny sleeping face.’_

 

Eric falls asleep on his couch twenty minutes into the movie they chose after Dele threw a _very dignified_ hissy fit over losing on FIFA and refused to play again.

Eric has a half-eaten bag of crisps in his lap, his hold loosening as he relaxes into the dreamlands. Dele picks it up before it falls and places it next to the already empty bowls of popcorn and grapes on the coffee table.

“Should’ve just told me you were tired, you twat.”

Eric grumbles in his sleep and shifts his weight towards Dele, who finds himself stuck in place, with his friend’s warm body snuggled up against his side.

“—Twat,” Dele repeats in a gentle whisper, but makes no move to wake Eric up. The movie goes unnoticed as Dele focuses his attention on Eric’s face, the way he furrows his brows and purses his lips, like he’s dreaming of something confusing or unpleasant.

It’s the first time Dele realizes there are dark bags under Eric’s eyes. It’s surprising, considering it’s usually Dele who’s forced to stay up half the night because of Eric’s snoring when they’re staying in their shared room.

Like a clockwork, Eric lets out a soft snore, more cute than annoying.

Dele doesn’t need to fight back the adoring smile tugging on his lips, because for once Eric’s not there to see his expression.

There are two types of smiles Dele has saved for Eric alone: the unabashedly happy ones – the _best friend smiles_ , Harry calls them – with just a hint of teasing hidden in them; and the secret ones Dele can only afford when no one else is there to see them.

Dele leaves Eric on the couch once the movie ends, wrapped snuggly inside a thick blanket. Eric lets out a displeased whine when he loses his personal human body pillow but does not open his eyes.

In the morning, Dele wakes up feeling impossibly hot and sweaty, with his best friend pressed up against his back, fast asleep.

Eric will later claim he has no recollection of waking up during the night or joining him in bed, so they brush it off with a laugh, chalking the whole thing up to exhaustion.

 

 

_‘I think I like him?’_

 

Dele bounces on Eric’s back with no warning, his momentum almost bringing them both down to the frosty grass of the training pitch. Eric stays upright only on pure willpower and months (years) of practice in carrying Dele around.

“You’re a right tosser, Dele, you know that right?”

Eric’s arms wrapped around Dele’s thighs, hoisting him higher up on his back, tell a different story. Dele replies by tightening his hold around Eric’s shoulders.

“Serves you right, after all the times I’ve had to carry your weight on the pitch.”

“ _You’re_ carrying my weight?” Eric lets out an incredulous laugh and then his hold on Dele’s legs is gone, and Dele can feel himself falling just a second before it happens. Except his fast hold on Eric’s shoulders is still there, which pulls Eric down with him, and they end up sprawled on the ground in a pile of flailing limbs.

“See, you can’t even do the carrying properly when we’re at practice!” Dele is giggling even as he tries to wriggle himself out of the pile. It’s not too easy, considering Eric’s whole weight is on him, holding him down.

“Fancy yourself smart, do you?” Eric smacks him over the head, but he’s laughing now too, his eyes sparkling with mirth.

Dele realizes belatedly that their faces are far too close for comfort – he can even feel Eric’s warm breath ghosting over his flustered cheeks. Eric’s too close for Dele to see his expression, which must mean he cannot see Dele’s face either – which is a blessing, really, considering Dele is pretty sure he looks absolutely smitten.

“You know you like it,” Dele tells Eric impishly and wriggles his arm free from under Eric’s weight, only to pinch his cheek pointedly, “now get off me, sweet cheeks.”

“Get a room, you two!” someone yells at them as Eric finally jumps up and offers a hand to pull Dele upright along with him. Neither of them pays the offhand comment any mind, shy eyes meeting briefly and flushed cheeks mirroring each other.

Eric’s larger hand is still wrapped around Dele’s when they make their way to the centre of the pitch, where the rest of the squad is waiting for them to get started with training.

 

 

_‘Kissing is bloody great, FYI.’_

 

Dele closes the diary (that’s not really a diary) with a warm smile.

It was the last entry for this notebook – he has a new one already waiting on his bedside table – and looking back, he’s hard pressed to find even one entry that’s _not_ about Eric.

That’s not to say there’s nothing else that makes him happy; on the contrary, he can’t even remember a time he had so many things to be grateful about. Eric just happens to be the one thing he’s _most_ grateful about.

The man in question walks in right at that moment, and blobs down on Dele’s bed like he owns it.

Dele scoots over to give him more room and drops the notebook through the crack between the wall and his bed before Eric has a chance to ask about it. No need to give him any more chances to gloat; his stupid potato face is already about to split in two with the force of the smile he aims at Dele.

“What you up to, babe?”

“Don’t call me that.” Dele makes a face at the pet name. He never signed up for this.

“—Darling, then?” Eric purses his lips playfully and Dele resist the urge to hit him over the head.

“I think I’ve made a terrible mistake by letting you into my life.”

“Rubbish, you know you love me!”

Dele _does_ know. That’s the best part.

“Keep telling yourself that.” Dele leans in and brushes his lips against Eric’s.

He _will_ tell Eric. Soon. Although he’s pretty sure Eric knows already.


End file.
